Surprising Links Between Spanish and Arabic

Did you know that if you speak Spanish you have a good head start in Arabic? It might not at first seem like an obvious contender for vocabulary crossover in the way that Latin languages and English share words, but Spanish gets a surprising 8% of its lexicon from Arabic.

These aren't rarely used words either, many are very common, including hasta, usted, azúcar, barrio and aceite.

The video below gives a good demonstration of the similarities. It also give some information on how this merging of languages originated.

It states - "In 711 AD, The Moors were nomadic people from North Africa who took their Islamic culture and religion with them during the invasion of Spain. In southern Spain, The Moors never established a stable central government, which led to the fall of the caliphate in the 11th century. Moorish was then captured by the Almoravids in 1174."